Portable Battery for Extended Brompton Trips.

On my recent trips on my Brompton I have been out and about for several hours at a time. When out on such trips I have used my iPhone 5 extensively! On the train to the meet up point I have tweeted, updated Facebook, sent text messages, made phone calls, surfed the net, taken photos and even blogged. When on a ride I have done all of the above and used its GPS and map apps to find my way when lost. In short I use it a great deal!

Even with a battery life as good as the iPhone has (which is a great improvement on my old iPhone 4) being used heavily has resulted in the battery becoming low. Begin without a phone in the middle of nowhere is not a good thing, so a solution was needed.

My partner in crime iCrazyBee showed me a portable battery that you can use to plug in a lead and charge your iPhone or any USB device. A brilliant solution. I could have bought one of these from Amazon but I wanted to be able to go into a shop and have a look at one and be able to go back to that same shop if things didn't go well.

The Power Walker busy charging my iPhone 5

In Maplin I found the "Power Walker." It cost £19.99 and has two USB charging ports which you can plug almost any UBS powered device. It is not very heavy at all and not much bigger than an iPhone. It is also quite clever and knows what charge voltage to give your device and has a power surge cut off. It  comes with a 60% charge and was able to bring my iPhone back to 100% power quite quickly from 14% which is good.

The device can be charged using the supplied cable via a computer UBS slot but this takes longer. A better way would be to charge it via any UBS main adapter. The charge stays in the device for up to three months at more or less 100% and it can be charge 500 times. I haven't tested it fully but I estimate that I could charge my iPhone from zero to 100% three and a half times!

So far I am really pleased with it and it will be coming with me on all Brompton trips. If like me you go on extended trips you might want to get one of these as I can already see it becoming invaluable.